Signatures of criticality arise from random subsampling in simple population models.

ABSTRACT: The rise of large-scale recordings of neuronal activity has fueled the hope to gain new insights into the collective activity of neural ensembles. How can one link the statistics of neural population activity to underlying principles and theories? One attempt to interpret such data builds upon analogies to the behaviour of collective systems in statistical physics. Divergence of the specific heat-a measure of population statistics derived from thermodynamics-has been used to suggest that neural populations are optimized to operate at a "critical point". However, these findings have been challenged by theoretical studies which have shown that common inputs can lead to diverging specific heat. Here, we connect "signatures of criticality", and in particular the divergence of specific heat, ba

SUBMITTER: Nonnenmacher M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5640238 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature